


For Me?

by CodeSeven (Santhe)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Captain Swan - Freeform, F/M, Fluff, post-season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 07:55:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2261880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Santhe/pseuds/CodeSeven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We understand each other, you and I."</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Me?

It’s difficult for both of them, she thinks. Harder than either will admit.  
  
Emma remembers every moment, perhaps more clearly than she should. From the first second she saw something in him, something sunken under the snarky grin and crude quips, she was baffled.  
  
She still remembers the sting of rum sloshing across her bloody palm, the surprise as he (startlingly gently) wraps the black cloth around the cut. The panic when the giant apparently lands on his neck.  
  
His little speech in the dungeon was enough to send her curiosity firmly back into hiding behind that wall (keeps out pain but love as well- her mother’s voice chimed away in her thoughts) but he was an odd one, this pirate. Because once revenge began to seep from him, the minute he turned that ship around and carried back the bean, he was just like her.  
  
(We understand each other, you and I.)  
  
She’d meant what she said but oh, how she fought that little truth the minute he had seen it.  
  
Pretending she hadn’t seen him falling for her. Pretending she hadn’t been doing the same. Ignoring the glances, the comments, the changes, and then the kiss (just a one time thing). Too buried with worries about Henry and Neal and (I feel like what I’ve always been- an orphan). But he was the constant through the variables, rarely ruffled and always steadfast, deadly and protective.  
  
So when he of all people began to slip away after finding her, coming back for her, what was she to do? She hadn’t let him in, not yet, not really, so why was he shutting her out?  
  
Henry loved him. She had held to that. If he wasn’t distancing himself far enough to avoid her son, maybe he could still come back (I don’t know what happened last year and I don’t care). There were moments though where she wondered, chasing through the frosted forest, standing off in the flickering hallway, wondered what was wrong.  
  
(I’m tired of living in the past.)  
  
But the truth came out. The irony of cursed lips she would never have kissed. Either kiss him or watch him (the man you can’t wait to run away from) die. She couldn’t, just couldn’t, and she thinks perhaps he’s the only one who would have understood why.  
  
Then Neal’s dead and they’re alone, in the past, screwing up everyone else's lives just as much as their own.  
  
And they’re swirling around a ballroom, draped in noble’s clothing and learning how to waltz and (You cut quite the figure in that dress, Swan) and forgetting, if just for a moment, that they don’t belong in that little happy ending.  
  
Snow goes up in flames and Hook’s arm draws her in without thought, without hesitation, without questioning whether or not she needs it because he knows (I’ve been abandoning them my whole life).  
  
And then they’re happy and they’re home and Henry’s smiling and remembering and (You gave up your ship? For me?).  
  
Amazing how much difference it made to kiss him by choice. Not forced on as a debt-filler or a life-savor, but by that blossoming gratefulness that he was there and came back for her no matter what  
  
and still her here and now, trust rewarded for once because he knows, he knows about loss and being abandoned and he knows about her.  
  
“Emma, love,” he whispers, arms warm and voice soft.  
  
They talk, sometimes, in a way she never thought she’d be able to. It’s rare and it’s quiet, dark secrets cried in candlelight, hands held tight and sweaty. Explaining their pasts hurt, confessing their injuries and changes and pains. She gripped him like a lifeline she had never had before and explained a half-decade of nameless bodies in the night, about Neal and Walsh and Graham and foster homes and losing whatever her love was invested in.  
  
“Quiet, darling, you needn’t wake.” His steps jostle her lightly and she blinks herself out of awareness again.  
  
Then he replies, eyes achingly gray and sad, with his first love Milah and his fallen brother and his wretched king and hundreds of years sailing around and around the devil child with fruitless hopes to skin a crocodile. And they hold on as they drown, because if they drown together they at least won’t die alone.  
  
The mattress dips lightly where he puts her, heavier where he settles, and the blankets drape over her shoulders as his fingers ghost through her hair. And suddenly she jerks up, fearful that he’s gone, that she drifted and let him get away. “Killian!”  
  
“Hush, Swan, it’s alright.” He catches her with a calloused hand and draws her back down, hugs her close and desperate. “I’m here.”  
  
She rumbles “Good” and holds on tight, fingers knotted in his shirt, nuzzling his neck. “’Cause you’re not allowed to leave.”  
  
His chuckle rumbles into his throat and into his chest and into her. “Mighty possessive for one who fell asleep without me, mate. On the couch, no less. Made me carry you all the way here just for the company.”  
  
How she had longed for this, this life. Living with her son and someone else, someone around for the long haul. Finally, home. A place where she could fall asleep on the couch with a book and wake up carried to her bed by a lover. The only lover.  
  
“Mate? That’s love to you,” she mutters, and she feels his smile against her forehead, a sleepy curve of amusement, and tugs him closer.  
  
“Apologies, love,” he breathes, laughter smoothing down and replaced by easy heartbeats. “Won’t happen again. Now sleep, Emma. Love. Goodnight.”  
  
She smiles sleepily as she slips away. “Night, Killian.”  
  
Maybe it is hard, this thing, this love. But at least this time, it’s worth it.


End file.
